TCAL site critique

dangerman

Hey everyone,

it's that time again, time for a spit & shine on TCAL. the Current version: http://tcal.net/ is seriously falling to pieces and showing it's hacked togetherness far too much.

So here's a picture of the new version:

http://tcal.net/wp-content/uploads/2006/09/newtcalpreview1.jpg

Sorry about it just being a pic, i haven't got around to setting up a proper staging environment.

It's very much a 'it ain't broke' approach, as in right now we want to keep the basic elements the same, because people are used to it.

Some points:

Too american flaggy?
Too web20ey gradienty?
Too much/too little white space?

That and anything else + radical suggestions also appreciated. Be as critical as possible!

This is not a dead-set redesign, we're more than willing to trash it and start over if it's not good enough. It's also worth pointing out that we plan a much bigger redesign when we actually get down to the functional level and hack wordpress to bits.

Update: The new theme is now live across the site, so if you see any problems, please let us know.

CuLT

To be honest Dave, I don't think I'd have noticed a change if you hadn't pointed out "here is current one, here is new one".

dangerman

zing.

yeh you are absolutely right. it's more of a 'lets clean this place up' rather than lets blow everything apart with a new design.

If you look at the current one, http://tcal.net, the amount of text alignment problems is unreal. The code is also a mess, so this is more of a clean out the cobwebs move than anything major.

CuLT

Well, in that case it does the job just right! After some brief examination there it does appear cleaner.

The buttons at the top are certainly an improvement.

Rollo Tamasi

hey dave, slightly ot but that sig you have...it's a wordpress plugin yes? can you give me the link for it please

i'm in the same boat as Cult, i couldn't notice any real difference. I do think it's a bit too white though.

frodo_dcu

i belive he has added some red gradient backgrounds to the headers which are quite nice i mite add. but i really can't see any other differance,

just noticed the right hand coloum looks more squished in the new one

sorry danger but i wouldn't even call this a "spit & shine"

dangerman

Rollo Tamasi wrote:

hey dave, slightly ot but that sig you have...it's a wordpress plugin yes? can you give me the link for it please

i'm in the same boat as Cult, i couldn't notice any real difference. I do think it's a bit too white though.

not a plugin, i wrote it based on someone elses code.

details here but its a disaster cause i wrote it back when i barely knew what php was so on your own head be it: http://tcal.net/archives/2004/10/24/tcal-rss-super-button-tutorial/

back on topic. Too white... I agree too a point, but i wanted to give a lot of more space to elements... rather than bordering up with lots of lines.

frodo_dcu

CuLT wrote:

The buttons at the top are certainly an improvement.

true it does help dispell the wordpressyness* of the page

i think white helps keep it clean but a little colour wouldn't go astray


*wordpressyness is a real word honest

dangerman

frodo_dcu wrote:

sorry danger but i wouldn't even call this a "spit & shine"

lol this is interesting.

it's amazing how different i see the redesign but i guess thats cause i'm very close to it.

It's all tiny things like alignment issues, spacing of text, clarity of links etc. that's being changed.

So in that respect I guess my bad - it's quite subtle what's being done but it's the little things that make all the difference - especially when trying to cater to both brand new visitors and people who return every day.

Goodshape

Not much to rant and rave about, but an improvement on the current theme for sure.

dangerman

and just to add a bit of excitement, we just turned on the new theme so it's live across the site now. So if you find any niggles at all, lettuce know!

frodo_dcu

dangerman wrote:

lol this is interesting.

it's amazing how different i see the redesign but i guess thats cause i'm very close to it.

It's all tiny things like alignment issues, spacing of text, clarity of links etc. that's being changed.

So in that respect I guess my bad - it's quite subtle what's being done but it's the little things that make all the difference - especially when trying to cater to both brand new visitors and people who return every day.

I know what you mean i've often spent ages trying to get everything to line up just right esp when i was first learning css


your still having a little trouble down the left as far as i can see, well in saying that i would have the names indented further that the titles and not the other way round if you get what i mean

edit: also the "Click here for details on signing up to TCAL and posting your own links." is about 1 maybe 2 pixles too far right if you want real "niggles"

dangerman

frodo_dcu wrote:

I know what you mean i've often spent ages trying to get everything to line up just right esp when i was first learning css

your still having a little trouble down the left as far as i can see, well in saying that i would have the names indented further that the titles and not the other way round if you get what i mean

yep, i spotted that one. And ghaaah, there's about a million problems that have just arisen as we turn it on... kaboom ...

one last thing: we know it doesn't validate yet, but it will...

Figment

It is a slight improvement.
The site is very busy so you are always going to have a hard time organising the layout. You need to decide which data you want to have the most importance on the page, number it by importance from 1-10 and work the design from that.
I have always liked the site anyway and check it daily

dangerman

Figment wrote:

It is a slight improvement.
The site is very busy so you are always going to have a hard time organising the layout. You need to decide which data you want to have the most importance on the page, number it by importance from 1-10 and work the design from that.
I have always liked the site anyway and check it daily

absolutely, the structure of the information has always been the hardest thing. We're pretty sure by now that the 'latest comments' on the left is pretty much number 1 (the comments are often the most entertaining thing AND give you a good indication of what's popular at the moment, AND introduce a sense of community etc.), but after that it gets very difficult to arrange.

Which is more important - recent irish posts or the features - which people poor lots of work into ... all kind of questions like that. I suppose you could let people choose in a myYahoo type way, but that introduces needless complexity. Very hard to architect it all and keep it clean.

Thanks for the compliments.